The Idea is the unity that has fallen into plurality by virtue of the temporal and spatial form of our intuitive apprehension.

The concept, on the other hand, is the unity once more produced out of plurality by means of abstraction through our faculty of reason;

the latter can be described as unitas post rem, and the former as unitas ante rem.

Finally we can express the distinction between concept and Idea figuratively, by saying that the concept is like a dead receptacle in which whatever has been put actually lies side by side, but from which no more can be taken out (by analytical judgements) than has been put in (by synthetical reflection).

The Idea, on the other hand, develops in him who has grasped it representations that are new as regards the concept of the same name; it is like a living organism, developing itself and endowed with generative force, which brings forth that which was not previously put into it.

Now it follows from all that has been said that the concept, useful as it is in life, serviceable, necessary, and productive as it is in science, is eternally barren and unproductive in art. The apprehended Idea, on the contrary, is the true and only source of every genuine work of art.

The generation, in other words the dull multitude of any time, itself knows only concepts and sticks to them; it therefore accepts mannered works with ready and loud applause. After a few years, however, these works become unpalatable, because the spirit of the times, in other words the prevailing concepts, in which alone those works could take root, has changed.

Only the genuine works that are drawn directly from nature and life remain eternally young and strong, like nature and life itself. For they belong to no age, but to mankind; and for this reason they are received with indifference by their own age to which they distained to conform; and because they indirectly and negatively exposed the errors of the age, they were recognized tardily and reluctantly.

Now, if the purpose of all art is the communication of the apprehended Idea, this Idea is then grasped by the man of weaker susceptibility and no productive capacity through the medium of the artist's mind, in which it appears isolated and purged of everything foreign;

further, if starting from the concept is objectionable in art, then we shall not be able to approve, when a work of art is intentionally and avowedly chosen to express a concept; this is the case in allegory.

An allegory is a work of art signifying something different from what it depicts. But that which is perceptive, and consequently the Idea as well, expresses itself immediately and completely, and does not require the medium of another thing through which it is outlined or suggested. Therefore that which is suggested and represented in this way by something quite different is always a concept, because it cannot itself be brought before perception.

Hence through the allegory a concept is always to be signified, and consequently the mind of the beholder has to be turned aside from the depicted representation of perception to one that is quite different, abstract, and not perceptive, and lies entirely outside the work of art. Here, therefore, the picture or statue is supposed to achieve what a written work achieves far more perfectly.

[...] certainly no great perfection in the work of art is demanded for what is here intended; on the contrary, it is enough if we see what the thing is supposed to be; for as soon as this is found, the end is reached, and the mind is then led on to quite a different kind of representation, to an abstract concept which was the end in view.

If in plastic and pictorial art we are led from what is immediately given to something else, this must always be a concept, because here only the abstract cannot be immediately given. But a concept can never be the source, and its communication can never be the aim, of a work of art. On the other hand, in poetry the concept is the material, the immediately given, and we can therefore very well leave it, in order to bring about something perceptive which is entirely different, and in which the end is attained.

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We continue the iconoclast habit and destroy images in religion and literature through allegory and in psychology through conceptual interpretation. (This kitten in your dream is your feeling function; this dog, your sexual desire; this great snake coiled in the corner is your unconscious, or mother, or anxiety.)

The image is slain and stuffed with concepts or vanishes into an abstraction.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Calling
a story an allegory is intellectually lazy, unless the author intended
it to be so. It tricks people into forcing themselves to accept one
possible explanation for any story, if it has a "lesson."

On some level
it is also insulting to an author to suggest that their entire work is a
one-to-one substitution to an actual event, unless it is strictly
intended. Calling an Onion article an allegory wouldn't be insulting,
as each article specifically tackles an issue of choice; it is a
lampooning of one aspect of modern culture per article, and the whole
production of works is great, because of the format. But it is
intended.

LotR is often considered an allegory to WWII, and the Ring has been
compared to nuclear weaponry or even nationalism. I personally don't
find any of those interpretations to hold much merit, as they lack any
of the metaphysical aspects of the object in question.

I mean, really,
it's magic.

Some allegories really are timeless lessons in philosophy and folk
wisdom and should not be discounted. No one argues the conversation
that can result from discussing the Allegory of the Cave or any of the
Parables.

However, these allegories all have an intended purpose and
point to them, as well as a specific audience that is intended to hear
them. To reduce the entirety of the story of LotR into one lesson or
one point is reductive.

[...] men, that is to say, are now writing only with the male side of
their brains [...] It is the power of suggestion that one most misses, I
thought, taking Mr B the critic in my hand and reading, very carefully
and very dutifully, his remarks upon the art of poetry.

Very able
they were, acute and full of learning; but the trouble was that his
feelings no longer communicated; his mind seemed separated into
different chambers; not a sound carried from one to the other.

Thus,
when one takes a sentence of Mr B into the mind it falls plump to the
ground - dead; but when one takes a sentence of Coleridge into the mind,
it explodes and gives birth to all kinds of other ideas, and that is
the only sort of writing of which one can say that it has the secret of
perpetual life.

Critics who want to escape from
the mysteriousness of the work try to replace it by
the intention they ascribe to the
artist.

A few years ago, Robert Klein argued that it is no longer possible to judge a
painting or sculpture without knowing who made it and in what spirit. When we look
at a contemporary painting in a gallery, we search
for the artist’s name and the title of
the painting, if it has one. We do this not out of
mere helplessness or curiosity but in
the hope of seeing the work as the fulfilment of an
intention.

What Klein meant, I think,
was that the work of art now persists chiefly as an
indication of an intention; it is as an
embodied intention that it can best be studied. It is comforting to be in the presence of intentions we understand because the
considerations of psychology and economics aren’t at all mysterious—discussion of
them is easy.

You’ll recall the incident, a few years ago, when the Tate Gallery paid
good domestic cash for a work called 'Equivalent VIII', a load of bricks laid on the
floor by the artist Carl Andre. Andre’s intention was far more interesting than the
bricks or the order in which he assembled them.

'I sever matter from depiction,’ he said, ‘I am the Turner of
matter’. He meant that in choosing bricks, metal plates, or bales of hay, he chooses
things that are associated with particular uses, and he diverts them from those uses so
that he can give them intrinsic existence.

(Andre's
materials have not already become what their manufacturer wanted them
finally to be: as, for instance, a car-mirror (Joseph Bueys) or a
lavatory seat (Duchamp).)

Normally we look at things mainly for their use; we deal with them as we deal with the wallpaper in our rooms, we would notice it only if it was gone, torn or daubed with black paint.

Carl Andre wants much the same result. Looking at his bricks, we see them as such, as objects: the artist has forced us to pay attention. He doesn’t claim that there is anything sacred in the bricks themselves, or even in his way of disposing them.

Andre regards the artistic event as a combination of the artist’s intention and our way of receiving it. Is there anything against this? No, except that art in this sense can have no history other than that of its intention.

Once we have taken the point and resolved to amend our lives accordingly, there is nothing more to do. Like any one of Andy Warhol’s films, it is not necessary to see it, it’s enough to understand that it is there, and why.

The way I think about making exhibitions is less about having an argument I’m trying to prove to the world - that this is the right way to think, or to see - it’s more a hypothetical story that I’m trying to tell.

I’m trying to keep it as open as possible, to provide lots of different entry points for different audiences. I’m not interested in trying to hammer away at people's perceptions to make sure they only see it one way.

I do an exhibition because I want to know what the show is about, and if I already did know what it was about then I would not find much interest in doing the show, because it just becomes an exercise in illustrating an argument I’ve already figured out.

For me its more exciting, and more alive, to [not know what it’s about].